


Wishverse 06 - Big Barbecue on the Countryside

by Soledad



Series: If Wishes Were Horses (Wishverse) [6]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Actions Have Consequences (at least here), Canon-Typical Violence, Episode rewrite: s1.06 - Countrycide, F/M, Heavy-Duty Gwen Bashing, Original Dialogue In Different Context, So very AU, The Many Departures of Gwen Cooper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 06:22:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7703851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soledad/pseuds/Soledad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many different ways to get rid of Gwen Cooper, while keeping the episodes as canonical as possible, including a great deal of original dialogue. A writing experiment. Not for Gwen-fans, obviously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Again, a POV I haven’t considered before, but who am I to argue with the characters if they want to offer their insight? Also, I gave one of the team-intern relationships a twist; I hope you don’t mind.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **EPISODE 06 – BIG BARBECUE ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, Part 1**

Dr. Owen Harper had repeatedly asked himself in the recent days what had possessed him to begin an affair with Gwen Cooper. Granted, he preferred to sleep with people in so-called stable relationships, because that way he could be sure he wouldn’t end up with the woman in the long run. After Katie’s death, he didn’t want to be with _anyone_ for more than the occasional shag.

The other reason was that he got some perverse satisfaction out of the knowledge that he’d managed to undermine such a relationship. Since he had never got the chance to settle down with Katie in married bliss, he enjoyed to take at least the bliss part from seemingly happy couples. It _was_ sick, yes – but again, he worked for Torchwood and was on first name basis with Weevils and a pterodactyl. How much weirder could a person’s life possibly get?

Sitting in the SUV, next to Jack, while they were racing towards the Brecon Beacons, he couldn’t possibly have a clue that his rhetoric question would soon be answered… in the most unpleasant way one could imagine. He was too busy ranting about their current mission.

The countryside. God, how he hated the countryside! It was dirty, it was unhygienic, it smelled of the strangest things, it crawled with insects and other smaller and greater animals… Why would anyone in their right minds choose to live there when they could have perfectly good cities and, well, you know, _civilization_?

Come to think about it, what were they doing here to begin with? Okay, seventeen people have vanished without a trace in the last five months, all within a twenty-mile radius, but wasn’t that the job of the police? It wasn’t so as if there had been sightings of visiting UFOs or tentacled aliens who ate housecats. Even Rift activity had been unusually low in the recent weeks. Why should Torchwood bother with what was most likely the work of a mundane human serial killer? Living out there would drive any self-reflecting man raving mad, so not even the motivation was so hard to guess.

He knew the reason, of course. Detective Swanson, the only copper who was willing to cooperate with them (well, _sometimes_ ) had called Ianto and asked for help. As the “public face” of Torchwood, Ianto was the one who usually dealt with the police (so much about Gwen’s oh-so-original idea of having a police liaison), and as much as Owen hated to admit it, their teaboy was more than capable of getting rid of them if they called for trivial reasons. So, this one had to be one of the important calls.

Still, he couldn’t understand why Jack would want to make a full-team event of it, dragging even Ianto out of his archives, blathering something about team bonding or whatnot. At least it was obvious that Ianto hated the idea, too – although it didn’t keep him from providing food for the team with the same efficiency as back in the Hub. Even if all he could come up were some lousy burgers.

“Come on,” Owen grumbled, “aliens aren't gonna bother hanging around out here. Probably some sort of weird suicide club with people choosing the same spot to end it all. God knows, if I had to spend too long up here, I'd want to top myself, too.”

Ianto chose this moment to pass him a burger. “Here you go. Careful, they're hot. Sure you don't want anything, Tosh?”

He handed burgers to Gwen and Jack, too. They unwrapped the food and were about to take a bite when Toshiko answered.

“Really sure,” she said with a grimace. “A friend of mine caught hepatitis off a burger from one of these places.”

 _Trust Tosh to ruin everyone’s appetite_ , Owen thought as Jack abruptly put his burger back down on the car hood. Gwen, on the other hand, started to stuff her face undisturbed. Owen wished that she hadn’t. Her half-open mouth, full of burger, was not the most appealing sight – had he been momentarily insane to start _anything_ with her? He lowered his own burger mid-bite, his appetite suddenly gone.

He looked up sharply, however, when he heard Jack say something about a “camp”. As if having dropped the word deliberately, Jack smiled at him in the most infuriating manner he was capable of – and _that_ was a broad scale indeed.

“What's the matter with a hotel?” he demanded, helping Jack to drag the tent gear out of the SUV. Jack gave him his most superior raised eyebrow.

“People are going missing round here,” he reminded. “Do you really wanna stay in a place run by strangers?”

Owen gave him a baleful look. “Cos sleeping outside is a lot safer.”

Jack grinned. “No other race in the universe goes camping,” he said cheerfully – a lot more cheerfully than any sane person should be in the bloody countryside. “Celebrate your own uniqueness.” But again, Owen had often questioned his boss’s sanity.

He dropped the tent gear on the grass and looked at it in disgust. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

The other two tents were already up and secured. Tosh and Ianto had done a good job with them, under Gwen’s so-called supervision.

“Need a hand getting it up, Owen?” Tosh asked helpfully, seeing his awkwardness around the whole stuff. That irritated him to no end – he hated to look incompetent, and that in front of women. Even if they were co-workers.

“If I did, I wouldn't ask _you_ ,” he snapped at her nastily.

He didn’t really mean to say that – it just slipped out, and he felt vaguely uncomfortable when Tosh’s face fell, as if he’d slapped her. She turned and stalked away, with Gwen looking after her with a vaguely satisfied smile on her face.

Owen kicked the tent gear in anger. Granted, he didn’t always treat Tosh well, but he didn’t act that way to please Gwen-bloody-Cooper, dammit! He acted so because he was a twat sometimes, but that didn’t give Gwen the right to patronize Tosh. Fucking newbie, what did she think of herself?

He looked down at the tent gear again. “Some pieces are missing!” he said accusingly, just to find a reason to blame someone else.

“No,” Ianto replied calmly. “I checked.” And with that, their teaboy headed for the tents to help the girls to set up the tables and other stuff.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
When the tents finally all stood, the girls had already arranged the tables in the centre of their little camp. Gwen seemed in an awfully good mood, and when Owen joined them, he could finally realize what kind of “fun” she was having.

“Oh, come on!” she whined. “It's just a bit of fun! Who was the last person you snogged?”

Owen dropped onto the folding bench and turned to pick on her, finding the whole thing annoyingly ridiculous. “See! You even sound like an eight-year-old!”

He could see Jack sitting in the front set of the SUV and grinning.

”Who the hell says _snog_?” he continued, just to rile Gwen up, but it didn’t work. She was too satisfied in her knowledge that she had something the others utterly lacked.

“Mine was... Rhys!” she announced proudly, and the others exchanged exasperated looks.

“Yeah, well, there's a surprise,” Owen commented sarcastically… although, in theory, it _could_ have been him – not that Gwen would ever admit it in front of the others, fucking little hypocrite that she was.

“Tosh, your go,” she said.

For some reason, Tosh seemed to want to evade an answer. “It's easy for you!” she said defensively; but nobody could fend off Gwen Cooper when she wanted to know something, whether it was her bloody business or not.

“Oh, come on!” she pushed. “Spill the beans!”

Tosh gave her a funny look; then she looked at Owen briefly, then back at Gwen, and finally said slowly, deliberately. “It was Andy. Your former partner. After we’ve cleaned up things in the Conway Clinic. Happy now?”

Gwen was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even close her mouth. Jack was grinning like an idiot; Ianto ignored the entire thing, or at least pretended to ignore it. Owen couldn’t blame him. It _was_ a stupid game that only Gwen could find funny – until someone ruined her amusement.

Tosh used the chance that Gwen was momentarily speechless and turned to him. “So, Owen. Who was yours?”

Owen suddenly felt the irresistible urge to be vicious. He looked at Gwen and saw her eyes widen with alarm, to an extent that they were literally bulging out of her head.

“Gwen, actually,” he replied with a nasty little smirk. Even Jack looked up surprised at this revelation. 

Tosh turned and looked at Gwen with a suddenly hardening face. “When was this?”

Owen raised his eyebrows at Gwen, daring her to tell the truth – although, as he’d expected, she would not.

“It was… complicated,” she said evasively.

“Didn't take you long to get your feet under the table,” Tosh muttered bitterly. Snogging PC Andy or not, it apparently bothered her a great deal, although Owen couldn’t for his life understand why.

“What?” Gwen asked; it wasn’t that Tosh would have spoken too quietly, but Gwen rarely paid her any attention.

Tosh ignored her in exchange and turned to Owen. “So was it just a kiss, or...” she trailed off, not entirely sure how to continue. Unlike Gwen, she _had_ class.

Jack put his clipboard down on the SUV seat and headed over to join the group. Owen was never more grateful for his presence. Not that he’d particularly want to hide his sorry affair with Gwen from the others, but he wasn’t willing to answer all the uncomfortable questions alone.

“Tosh, leave it,” Gwen said in an attempt of false superiority, and Owen hurriedly turned to their boss before things could escalate between the girls.

“Jack? Care to share the nasty details with us?”

Jack grinned. “Are we including non-human lifeforms?”

“Oh, you haven't!” Gwen exclaimed in horrified disgust, which was ridiculous, since Jack spent a great deal of time describing his hair-raising sexual escapades with various aliens, including a bug-eyed, tentacled monster that, as he’d secretly admitted to Owen, reminded him of Gwen.

“You're a sick man, Harkness!” Owen declared, just to raise the bait, but there was open admiration in his voice. “That is disgusting!”

“I never know when he's joking,” Gwen complied. Jack grinned at them but didn’t answer the original question.

Ianto, who’d been sitting among them quietly (and not showing any particular interest for the silly game) now looked at them.

“It's my turn, is it?” he said in an even, emotionless voice. “It was Lisa.”

Jack’s smile fell. The others froze mid-teasing, feeling uncomfortable. Only Gwen was stupid and tactless enough to start babbling again. “Ianto, I'm sorry...”

“Sorry she's dead?” Ianto asked. “Or sorry you mentioned it?” There was no anger in his voice, no accusation. It just sounded tired.

“I just didn't think,” Gwen apologized lamely, and it was the truest thing she could have said about herself. She just _never_ though.

“You forgot,” Ianto finished for her with that terribly empty smile that was worse than if he had screamed at them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Ianto’s bland answer to Gwen’s stupid babbling securely killed the fun for everyone – as much as there had been any in the first place. Owen sighed and rose from the bench. Sure, Teaboy _had_ endangered them all by hiding his murderous cyber-girlfriend in the basement, but they had killed the woman – the _creature_ – he’d still seen as his beloved. The fact that he’d been clearly delusional didn’t change the magnitude of his loss.

Owen knew he’d have done the same for Katie. And _that_ was what had made him so angry at Ianto; because Ianto had managed to keep Lisa, even after all rational hope had long been lost, while he’d never gotten the chance to at least _try_ to help Kathie.

“We should get some firewood,” he said. He wasn’t the least surprised when Gwen jumped to her feet and offered to give him a hand.

As expected, barely were they out of earshot, Gwen whirled around and snapped at him. “Couldn't you have kept that to yourself?”

“What's the matter,” Owen asked with a sly grin, “you embarrassed?”

She stomped with her foot like a small child. “You're such an arrogant shit sometimes, Owen!”

“Am I?” Owen asked slowly. “Then why have you been coming back for more ever since?” She just glared at him, her mouth hanging open, unable to find a much-needed snappy answer. He nodded. “I’ll tell you why: cos your sex life ain't up to much.” 

In her outrage, she grabbed him and pushed him up against the tree. “You might want to shut up before I lamp you one!” she threatened, sounding like an eight-year-old again. Like a _very_ dim-witted eight-year-old.

Owen laughed, turned her and pushed her up back against the tree, grinding his groin into her provocatively.

“Are you telling me you don’t like it?” he demanded. “That you don’t like screwing half the night while old Rhys believes you’re working on some mysterious case? That you don’t come so hard and so long when you’re with me that you forget where you are? If you got that from your boyfriend, you’d never come to _me_.”

Gwen opened her mouth to say something, but in that moment she saw some movement from the corner of her eye, and they had to go to investigate.

Ten minutes later Owen wished they hadn’t. Even for a doctor, it isn’t a daily event to find a skinless, meatless skeletal corpse. He wished he hadn’t eaten that burger earlier.

Of course, he had the honour to examine the gory found. Jack and Tosh helped him, while Gwen was leaning up against a far tree and couldn’t be moved to come any closer. Not that they’d come to any useful results. The body had been stripped of the flesh and bodily organs. Only the carcass was left, so he couldn’t determine the actual cause of death. At least they could rule out the involvement of Weevils; as Jack said the aliens didn’t finish off their victims like that.

When only moments later the SUV was stolen, though, they realized that they had much more urgent problems, Especially Owen, who had to face a seething Tosh as she was trying to collect her scattered stuff in the demolished camp.

“All right!” he snapped. “I've said I'm sorry!”

“Basic security protocols, Owen!” she pointed out, still fuming.

“Oh, get off your high horse, Tosh!” he snapped. “I was carrying that stupid gear.”

“What, the whole time?” she rolled her eyes.

“And then I was trying to put that bloody tent up,” he replied. “And then ... well, yeah, I sort of forgot that I'd left them in there. But I'm sorry. I'm human. I ballsed up. “

“If you’d try to think with your head instead of your dick just once, this wouldn’t have happened,” she retorted angrily.

Their argument could have escalated into something really ugly, had Jack not interfered and turned their attention back to the really important things. Fortunately, he did.

“Looks like that body wasn't a warning,” he said grimly. “More of a decoy.”

“That would mean we've been watched since we've arrived,” Gwen stated the glaringly obvious, doing the wide-eyed, lip-trembling routine again. Jack ignored him.

“Tosh, can you get a tracking signal?” he asked.

“Already done,” Ianto said in Tosh’s stead. “I took the liberty.” He waved his PDA, looking intolerably smug. “It's currently 3.4 miles west from here.”

“Gunning at ninety, no doubt,” Owen said sourly, because it irritated him that their office boy proved more useful than he, an experienced field agent. “You steal a piece of equipment like that, you drive straight on till morning.”

“Actually, no,” Ianto managed to keep the smugness on an almost bearable level, which was a good thing, or else Owen would have punched him. “It's been stationary for the past four minutes. I'd go so far as to say it was parked.”

Gwen checked the map. “There's a small village in that area,” she said. “Other than that, nothing for thirty miles.”

Tosh pulled a face. “Call me suspicious, but this has all the hallmarks of a trap.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing,” Jack said grimly. Then, after a beat, he asked. “Anyone fancy a walk?”

Without waiting for an answer, he headed out. Gwen turned and looked at Owen. Ianto and Tosh looked at each other. Neither of them liked the idea of walking into a trap with their eyes wide open, but what else could they do? They groaned collectively and followed Jack.

Owen’s hatred for the countryside went up another notch.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
They came upon a building out in the distance in font of them. It looked like the – rather shabby – settings of some medieval sword-and-sorcery movie, Owen found, if it weren’t for the grey tractor standing in front, upon the equally grey graveled drive. The stone walls of he building were grey and withered with age, too… and likely cold and damp in the inside. Owen shuddered with disgust.

“Why would anyone want to live out here?” he asked rhetorically.

Jack ignored him, having more important concerns at the moment. “Has the SUV moved yet?” he asked from Ianto, who checked his PDA _and_ his watch.

“Not for an hour now,” he replied.

“All right,” Jack said, putting on his ‘determined leader’ posture. “Tosh, Ianto – follow the signal, find the SUV. Owen, Gwen, let’s see if there’s any room in that inn.”

There was no sign on the longhouse building, but it could hardly be anything else than the village inn. It was only logical to start the investigations there; the inn – or the pub – was traditionally the centre of social life in any village. The team split up; Jack, Gwen and Owen headed for the building.

Getting into what had to be the main dining room, they found it empty. Jack motioned for them to look around. Gwen went behind the bar, making a great show of doing proper police work: opening the cash register, looking at the bills in the till... unfortunately, without remembering to put on rubber gloves first. Owen grinned and stepped up to the bar.

“Pint of best please, love,” he said jovially. “And em, yeah, get one for yourself.”

She levelled a look at him that could have frozen Hell over. Jack smiled behind her back, which she, fortunately, couldn’t see, or else she’d have thrown another tantrum. So she was forced to actually do her job for a while... or at least try. It didn’t last long, though.

“Where is everybody?” she asked in frustration, putting the till down.

Jack shrugged, took his gun out and motioned for her to follow him. Owen remained behind for a moment to check out the rest of the dining room, but he found nothing conclusive. So he went after them soon enough.

He found them in what was probably the kitchen of the inn – or, at least, had once been. Right now, it was the most disgusting mess he’d ever seen… and he _had_ seen his fair share of ugly places. The curtains were all pulled closed – he couldn’t even guess what colour they might have originally been – and dirty post and dishes lay in the sink and on the counters. The only illumination came from a bug like hanging from the ceiling.

In the middle of the room, Gwen was holding the counter top and throwing up on the floor.

“That burger coming back to haunt you?” Owen asked sarcastically. Then he passed Jack and saw it… another skinless, meatless corpse on the floor, about a foot from where Gwen was standing. “Oh, my God…”

Somewhere far away a door slammed shut. That woke them all of their petrification.

“We need to get out of here,” Jack said with that unnatural calmness that only came over him at times of serious danger. “Now, Gwen!” he added sharply, and was out of the door already.

Owen moved on after Jack automatically. He’d long learned to obey without question when their boss was in that particular mood. After a moment of hesitation, Gwen ran after them, down the stairs leading to the front door.

To their great relief, it was only closed, not locked. All three of them made it out onto the graveled drive, where Gwen doubled over again, retching and coughing. For once, Owen didn’t blame her. Even after all that he’d seen in his years with Torchwood, _this_ was highly disturbing.

”There’s another building behind the trees,” Jack said. “Let’s take a look in there… but be careful!”

They headed to the other building, Jack first, his gun at the ready, but he stopped on one side of it, waiting for Gwen to catch up. Gwen put a hand on the doorknob and silently counted to three. Owen rolled his eyes at the bloody movie cliché. Besides, shouldn’t Gwen have let Jack go first? Jack had _experience_ with that sort of stuff, for Pete’s sake! – whereas Gwen hadn’t got a clue. Why she kept insisting on playing the hero all the time was everybody’s guess.

At three, Gwen threw the door open and stepped inside, with her gun raised. Jack followed her in, assuming the same stance, the same position Owen had seen him in many dangerous actions.

“Go,” he whispered.

Gwen moved forward and stepped into something. She looked down – and freaked, if the extreme bulging of her eyes were any indication. Owen pushed by Jack to take a closer look at it; it looked like a pool of blood.

“What is it?” Jack asked from where he was securing the door, seeing Gwen slowly back away. It took her three separate efforts till she finally could answer.

“There's another body in there.”

Jack glanced behind himself, not entirely happy with their backs being unprotected. “Same as the other?”

Instead of answering, Gwen began to wail, her voice getting higher by the second. “What did this, Jack? Cos whatever it is, it can't be human. How far is this going to spread?” Clearly, she was losing it. But asking questions Jack was unable to answer didn’t really help. 

“Stay focused,” Jack said sharply, taking up position beside the open door. Gwen didn’t move; her eyes were focused on the body. She was freaking, big time. 

“I should be at home having dinner with Rhys,” she lamented. “What am I doing here with you?!”

“I don’t know,” Jack replied calmly. “You were the one who wanted to join Torchwood. I certainly tried to keep you away.”

She stared at him with big, accusing eyes. “Don't you ever get scared, Jack?”

Jack ignored the unphrased demand to comfort her. This was not the time; if she couldn’t take what the job threw at them, then she didn’t have a place among them.

“There's another two houses,” he said coolly. “We'd better take a look.”

He left the room, without throwing a look back. Gwen stared after him, disturbed by what she’d seen, before following him out 

Owen remained behind to take samples from the body, for later identification. The victim might have had family, or friends, who’d wish to know what happened to him – even if they’d never learn the whole truth.

Done with that, he stood and looked down at what once had been a person.

”Whatever they were, I hope you put up a good fight,” he said grimly and went out to join Jack and Gwen. 

This has gone too far. They needed to do something about it.


	2. Part Two

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **EPISODE 06 – BIG BARBECUE ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, Part 2**

He was halfway out of the building when he heard the shot. Putting the samples in his kit, he grabbed his gun and ran out of the house. Across the small alley between the two buildings, he could see Jack waving at him frantically from a half-opened door. Gwen was lying in the dirt, clutching her side, her eyes glassy with pain.

“What happened?” Owen asked, grabbing his kit and running over to them.

“Some kid hit her with a shotgun,” Jack replied grimly. “I told her to stay behind, but there was no way holding her back.”

Of course there wasn’t – she was Gwen-bloody-Cooper, after all.

“We need to get her into the house,” Owen said tersely. “I have to take a look at that wound of hers.”

Jack bent forward and picked Gwen up who whimpered in pain. “I got her. Find a suitable surface; they’ll have a kitchen table, if nothing else.”

They – whoever _they_ might have been – did have a kitchen table indeed. Owen cleared it, with the simple yet efficient method of knocking everything to the floor. Jack lowered Gwen onto the table, his jaw working as she grunted from the pain.

“Okay, I'll check upstairs,” he said, running past the kid and heading upstairs. 

The kid stood aside, watching them from horrified eyes. Owen ignored him and got to work, putting a blanket under Gwen’s head, who kept moaning his name over and over again. Under different circumstances it might have been flattering, but right now, it was just distracting, and not in a good way. He couldn’t afford to be distracted.

He turned on the light above the table, adjusting it to shine on her wound. His stomach knitted tightly; he was afraid to take a look, knowing that the injury might be too serious for his limited equipment to treat it properly.

“Bet you thought you'd never be glad to see me!” he said, trying to distract her with a lame joke.

But she didn’t seem to understand him – perhaps didn’t even hear him – just kept crying for his help. He grabbed her flailing arms and held them down as he looked at her.

“Listen,” he said through gritted teeth, “I'm going to have a look at your wound now, okay? Just keep calm.” Holding her down proved quite a task, so he added sharply. “Hands off, hands off. Okay.”

Gwen was clearly not getting what he was trying to tell her. “No, don't please!” she wailed. “Don’t!” 

Owen rolled his eyes; not that she could see it, as his face was shadowed behind the lamp. He could understand that she hurt, but even she had to understand that a gunshot wound needed to be treated. Dammit, was she completely bollocks or what? Did she want to bleed to the dead?

He pulled her pants band down and lifted up her shirt to look at the wound. Thank God, it didn’t look life-threatening. It would be a bitch to clean it, but she’d live.

“Right, it could've been much worse,” he commented in relief, applying a fresh bandage to the wound and hoping that she would follow his instructions. “Hold this. Apply pressure.”

Surprisingly enough, Gwen automatically applied pressure. Owen let out a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding and looked at the wound. Step #1 had been managed without a lengthy argument. Had he knew that, he’d have probably shot Gwen at various times already.

”Oh, Jesus!” Gwen wailed, and Owen was getting annoyed with her again. Okay, so he hurt; it was a gunshot wound, after all; it _ought_ to hurt. But shouldn’t a supposedly adult woman be able to control her reactions a little better? Especially in the presence of the kid who’d accidentally shot her and who was already out of his mind from sheer terror?

“The bullets are lodged relatively near the surface,” he told her. “You've been bloody lucky, girl. Another inch to the left and any one of your vital organs might've been... “

“What?” Gwen demanded, her eyes widening with alarm. Owen shook his head. Okay, that was a stupid thing to say. Just because he could have told it Tosh – in fact, had told her worse things during similar situations – he shouldn’t have expected _Gwen_ to deal with it like an adult. 

He grabbed a syringe to inject her with a local anesthetic. “All right,” he said, trying a dirty joke to distract her. “Do you want a quip about feeling a small prick?”

Gwen gave a sound between a snort and a groan. “No, but thanks for offering.”

 _Well, at least she sounds more lucid_ , Owen thought in satisfaction. Dirty talk always did the trick with hysterical patients.

“Here we go,” he said loudly and injected her. “All done.”

Laying the syringe aside, he took his tweezers. Gwen tried to see what he was doing, but from her position she couldn’t see much, and she began to moan again. “Oh, God, it hurts!” 

”It will stop hurting in a moment,” Owen encouraged her with forced patience because a full-blown panic attack was the last thing he could use right now. “But we have to get these pellets out, else everything would become a lot worse, do you understand me? “

Gwen nodded weakly and grabbed his shoulder tightly as he began to work. She managed to partly immobilize his hand that way, and he was sure he’d have bruises come tomorrow, but if that kept her in a halfway manageable state, he could work around it. He tried a dirty joke again; it had worked at the first time, after all.

“Right, there's gonna be a certain amount of residue,” he said. “So just lie back and think of Torchwood.”

Gwen snorted again but visibly calmed down a little. “Do you miss being a doctor?” she asked.

Owen suppressed a sigh. People who used to know him during his more conventional job kept asking the same question – as if he could bear to work in a hospital after Katie’s death! Still, those people could be forgiven cos they had no idea. But a fellow Torchwood member asking the same… Course, as it was Gwen, he probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. It was her favourite pastime to poke around in other people’s lives.

“Excuse me,” he said tersely. “I still _am_ a doctor.” I just don't deal with patients any more, that's all. It's ideal. That was the bit I always hated.”

That shut Gwen temporarily up, and he could take out the first pellet without being nagged about things that were not her business. He showed her the found. “Aint it a beauty? Come on. I'm good.”

The comment had such an obvious double-meaning that not even Gwen could miss it. “Not bad," she replied slyly.

They looked at each other for a moment in complete understanding, then she turned away. Owen returned to her side and she removed her hand from his shoulders, allowing circulation to return to the half-numb body part; then she turned her head completely away from him in a badly displayed superior manner. As if all that had passed between them in the recent weeks would have been his fault. Fucking little hypocrite.

The rest of the pellets were relatively easy to remove – assuming one had a steady hand – and Owen was bandaging her wound when Jack returned with a rifle, holding it like the hero of some western movie. He released the chamber and puts it aside, frowning. 

“What's taking Tosh and Ianto so long?” he wondered.

“Give them a chance,” Owen returned, not even bothering to look up from his work. “The SUV might be locked up.”

“Or they could be dead!” the kid said, speaking for the first time since they’d got in there. At their doubtful glare, he defiantly added. “Well, everyone else is. “

“Sit down!” Jack snapped at him. The kid sat down obediently, his pupils wide like those of a frightened animal. He clearly feared them, but not half as much as whatever was there outside.

“Tell us what happened here,” Jack instructed him, but the kid wasn’t in the right mental state to give any coherent answer.

“It's not human,” he muttered, hugging himself as if for protection. “My mum won't even know what's happened. They weren’t expecting me back for the weekend. God, why haven’t I gone home for the weekend…”

“We'll get you home okay,” Jack said in his best reassuring manner. Only that this time it didn’t seem to work.

“What are you going to do?” the kid asked.” You can't fight them. They're too strong. The only thing we can do is barricade the door.”

“Well, we’re not exactly weak ourselves,” Jack replied.

“Yeah, and we’d be a lot more efficient, had you not shot one of us, “Owen muttered, opening his kit.

The kid looked from one to the other; then he jumped to his feet and and ran to the door. He didn’t get so far, however. Jack grabbed him halfways and sat him back down.”

“No!” he said. “Splitting up would be a really stupid thing right now,” then he turned to Owen. “We'll make base at the pub.” 

Owen finished setting Gwen’s bandage and looked up to him. “What about Tosh and Ianto?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we go after them?”

Jack shook his head determinedly. “Not till we know what we're dealing with.”

Owen didn’t like the sound of that. Whatever he might think of Ianto, he was part of their team; and Tosh was invaluable. “But what if it's too late?”

“They're not children,” Jack replied dismissively. “They know what to do. Let's go.”

He stepped toward Gwen but Owen stopped him. “It's all right. I've got her. You go forward and secure our path.”

Jack hesitated for a moment, but Owen put his foot down firmly. Finally Jack backed away and headed quickly toward the door. Owen put Gwen’s arm around his shoulder to help her up. Gwen sat up and looked after Jack who was already out of the door. The kid stood up and watched as Owen helped Gwen to her feet, without any sign of wanting to help. That annoyed Owen, because shocked or not, he could support a wounded woman, dammit, especially as _he_ ’d been the one to shoot her.

And if _that_ hadn’t been enough, bloody Gwen began whining again. “Owen, I want to do it on my own.” Right. With a freshly bandaged gunshot wound in her side and a basic dosis of painkillers in her system that would wear off any minute now. Typical.

Owen had had enough. He let Gwen go without a comment. Her heroic stance was ruined within seconds as she staggered and nearly fell. Owen quickly grabbed her again, refraining from any comment on her idiocy. She didn’t say anything either, just leaned on him and they headed out of the room. The kid followed them docilely.

“I'm sorry about your friends,” he muttered. 

Owen looked back at him. “You can apologize later, mate, although none of this is really your fault. Let’s first get to the pub, shan’t we?” 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Theoretically, the kid’s idea of barricading the door would have been a sound one. There was _one_ thing that bothered Owen, though, while he and Jack used the furniture to build a barricade in the pub. As expected, the kid didn’t make a move to help them, and in her current state, Gwen was even more useless than usual.

“If we barricade ourselves in, what happens to Tosh and Ianto?” he asked. 

Jack gave him an irritated look. “Why are we still talking about this?”

“Cos they’re our team-mates and they’re bloody _missing_ , perhaps?” Owen said in a calm voice that was just a hair’s bredth from complete hysteria. Jack frowned at him.

“Tosh and Ianto can look after themselves,” he said.

“Can they?” Owen challenged. “Could _we_? Look what’s happened to Gwen! Are you really so sure that Tosh and Ianto can handle this? Teaboy has never been on a field mission before, and Tosh…”

“Tosh is tough,” Jack interrupted, “and there’s more to Ianto than you might give him credit for. Now, can we focus on _our_ job here? The kid is our first priority and they've already been for him once. They're not going to give up that easily.”

Owen looked at the kid who’d been lying down on the side, his eyes closed and hugging the rifle to his chest. He shook his head.

“I’m not sure I like your priorities, Harkness,” he said harshly.

“Tough,” Jack replied. “That’s the best you get from me.”

“My worries exactly,” Owen muttered, more out of the unexplainable need to be belligerent than out of hope that he might change Jack’s mind. There was preciously little chance for _that_ , as he knew it from previous experience.

A strange, scratching noise interrupted their argument. Looking for its source they saw Gwen at the blackboard that usually served as the menu card of the pub, next to the dartboard. She was writing notes.

“So, have we ever heard of a species who strip human bodies of flesh and organs?” she asked. The whole thing had a ridiculous rememberance of elementary school, although she probably was imitating detective meetings.

Owen walked up to her. “What are you doing? You need to rest.”

“I'm compiling what we've got,” she replied in a self-congratulating tome. “Seeing if it helps.”

Owen snorted. “Yeah, cos we know so bloody much!”

“We have to assume the others who disappeared have been killed, too.” Jack said. “That would certainly explain things, wouldn’t it?”

“So, you think there’s been seventeen deaths?” Gwen asked, and Owen rolled his eyes behind his back, because really, one didn’t need to be a genius to make that conclusion.

“At least,” Jack answered, more to order his own thoughts than to humour her. “These aren't casual killers. Not if the nature of the murders is any indication.”

Gwen wrote more notes on the board. Owen ignored her scribblings, checking his weapon instead. One cartridge meant way too little ammunition in his eyes. 

“Okay,” he said grimly. “So all this means is the rift is spreading. It’s dumping aliens and psychos wherever it fancies.”

Jack nodded. “Looks like that, yeah.”

“Great,” Owen said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “This conversation's cheered me up no end.”

Gwen’s gasp interrupted their discussion. “Did you see that?”

“Something outside?” Jack asked, switching into action mode immediately. He was really good at that.

Gwen nodded. Owen turned and saw a shadow move across another window. He turned and pointed the gun at it. 

“Was that the same one or different?” he asked.

Gwen, too, took her gun out and pointed it at a window. Jack walked over to the same window and looked outside, but neither of them could see anything.

Gwen glanced over her shoulder at the kid who was still lying down in the same position he’d achieved when getting in and hugging the rifle.

“He said they'd come back,” she whispered, her eyes widening in panic.

“Let's not jump to conclusions,” Jack said, although honestly, it wasn’t such a big jump, given the circumstances. “We don't know who they are or what their intentions are.”

“We can make an educated guess, though,” Owen muttered darkly.

At the same moment, the lights went out, plunging them into pitch black. Jack ran out and disappeared down the dark hallway.

”I'm thinking that's not a good sign," Owen commented. 

He and Gwen took position to watch the barricaded door. They heard something move somewhere, but they couldn’t determine either the distance or the direction. Gwen gasped, and Owen could positively feel the fear radiating from her – not that he’d blame her, not this time. Then they heard another sound and Gwen gasped again. The kid got up, ready to run for his life.

“They've come back,” he wheezed, apparently in full-blown panic. That kicked Gwen’s protective instincts in gear again.

“Kieran, listen to my voice, okay?” she said as calmly as she could, which, understandably, was not much at the moment. “Just come back. Kieran!” 

The kid didn’t answer. They listened carefully and heard the squeak of a door handle turning very slowly, very carefully. Jack turned, looked at the cellar door and swore.

“Great, we didn't check the cellar. We’re really good today!”

The cellar door was chained, but it opened to a split as something pushed it. Fortunately, the measly chain stopped it. Jack turned to brace the door.

“You can't let them in!” the kid shouted, very frightened.

“Come back from the door,” Gwen said, as panicking, the kid turned toward the barricaded door.

“Don't let them in!” he wailed. He was really getting on Owen’s nerves, even though his panic was more than understandable.

“Sit down!” Owen snapped at him. “We've got this under control!” But the kid didn’t listen.

“You don't understand,” he wailed. “You don't know what they're like.”

The chairs stacked up against the front door fell. The kid fired at the door with the shotgun. Someone fired back, breaking and shattering glass. Owen and Gwen huddled under the bar counter. Jack huddled near the cellar door. The previously barricaded door opened. Something took hold of the kid and dragged him out the door. 

“No, please...” he begged pitifully, “please, no, not me... !” 

Gwen got up from under the counter to help him. “Kieran!” But Jack stopped her before she could have gotten to the door.

The kid whimpered while he was being pulled out the door. “Help me!”

“Kieran!” Gwen shouted, struggling against Jack’s hold. “Dammit, Jack, let me help him!”

“It's pitch black,” Jack pointed out logically, which was a wasted effort on Gwen, but he tried it nonetheless. “You don't have any tracking devices! Do you want to get yourself killed?”

As expected, Gwen didn’t listen to a word he was saying and kept struggling against him. “Get out of my way!”

“Look,” Jack said with the patience of a saint, “whatever's in that cellar took three bullets. I heard it fall. Once we know what it is, then, we'll know how to deal with it.” 

“You do that,” Gwen returned. “ _We'll_ go after Kieran and the others.” 

“Have I asked you to speak for me, too?” Owen muttered under his breath. He didn’t even try speaking up enough for her to hear his words. It wouldn’t make a difference anyway.

“You are wounded!” Jack reminded Gwen, still trying to reason with her… and failing, as expected. She glared at him in a neraly hostile manner.

“Do you think that's gonna stop me?!” she demanded angrily.

“No,” Jack replied, his voice tired. “I _hoped_ it would… but it seems I was way too optimistic. So, since you aren’t being reasonable, someone else has to be for you.”

Despite her injuries, Gwen tossed him aside and stomped out of the building in an over-dramatic display of righteous anger. Jack rolled his eyes and looked at Owen.

“I’ll go to the cellar and catch that… well, whatever it is,” he said. “You go after Gwen and see that she doesn’t get herself killed. Oh, and do call the police. I don”t care if we have to Retcon them all afterwards; I’m not gonna put any more lives at risk here. We’re clearly outnumbered and outgunned.”

Owen nodded and ran out after Gwen. He found her some three feet from the front door, lying in a pool of her own blood.


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from Part 02. Obviously. And no, the title doesn’t really mean anything. I just thought it would be… catchy, to use Ianto’s vocabulary.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **EPISODE 06 – BIG BARBECUE ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, Part 3**

Owen swore under his breath violently when he saw the blood-soaked bandage. _Stupid git, she’s gotten her wounds opened!_ Now, how the hell was he supposed to fix her again? 

As much as he hated to leave her alone, unconscious and unprotected, he had to get back to the pub for his kit… if he could find it in the pitch black, that is. That was why he always hated treating patients; they _never_ listened. Dead Weevils were so much more cooperative. Ah, well, he ought to at least _try_ …

When he returned, he saw with relief that Gwen was still there, in the same position as he’d left her.

He patched her up in a great hurry, holding the torchlight with his teeth. They had no time to waste. It took him what seemed forever, but at last the bandage was changed, and he injected her another dosis of painkillers. After a few minutes Gwen groaned and opened her eyes.

“What happened?” she asked groggily.

“You chose not to listen – again – and then fainted right when you left the house, that’s what bloody happened,” Owen replied angrily while helping her to her feet. “Now, do you think we could perhaps go back to the house and let Jack chase phantoms?”

“We can’t do that,” Gwen protested, leaning heavily on them. “Tosh and Ianto might be in trouble… and we need to find that kid.”

Owen frowned. “You can barely walk. How do you intend to help anyone, let alone yourself? Are you completely bollocks or what?”

“I'm fine,” Gwen replied impatiently. She clearly was _not_ , but Owen was getting tired of her mulish stupidity and didn’t argue. If she wanted to walk around till she bled to her death, ruining all the good work he’d done on her wounds, it was her decision.

Unexpectedly, a police vehicle approached right in front of the drive, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Gwen’s annoyance went up several notches at once.

“That's all we bloody need,” she said. “Let me do the talking, I'll get rid of him.”

“Get rid of him?” Owen repeated incredulously. “Haven’t you heard a word of what Jack said? We’re supposed to fucking _call_ the police, not to send them away!”

The police car came to full stop, and a good-looking young officer, with a vague resemblance of Ianto of all people – apparently, these Welsh blokes all looked the same – gets out of it. He was wearing the same constable uniform Gwen had been when they first met.

“Who are you, please?” he asked in a friendly enough manner.

“Special Ops,” Gwen replied, and Owen groaned inwardly. “From Torchwood, have you heard of Torchwood?”

 _Sure they had_ , Owen thought sourly, _aren’t we advertising who we really are, sending the police a bulletin every month to keep them informed?_ There was a difference between Jack tossing the word “Torchwood” over his shoulder when he invaded any crime scene with a natural born confidence few people would even think to question, and Gwen’s inane babbling.

The officer must have thought something along the same lines because he gave Gwen a good, hard look – and discovered her bandage. “What's that then, a band is it? What's wrong with her?”

Owen shook his head tiredly. “Mate, you wouldn't understand.”

“What's that light over there?” Gwen suddenly asked, and Owen turned into the same direction she was looking.

Over the officer’s shoulder, they could see a light coming through the distance. Strangely enough, the officer glanced _behind_ himself before turning back to Gwen and Owen.

”The Big House?” he asked. “Sort of unofficial village hall. Village meeting tonight, that's why I'm here. Constabulary report.”

By then, Owen had realized that he was leading them on… that they most likely wouldn’t be able to count on him. That didn’t mean that they wouldn’t need to investigate. Tosh or Ianto might have been there.

“Come on,” he said to Gwen, and they ran past the officer, in the direction of the moving light.

“Where do you think you're going?” the officer shouted, and as they didn’t answer, he ran after them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Owen was the first to reach the source of light, and he froze with shock for a moment, seeing Tosh. She was being choked by a villager who had a distinct resemblance to prehistoric Troglodytes… or how Owen always imagined those anyway.

“No more games,” the Troglodyte grunted, looming over Tosh. “Hush now!”

Tosh gave a horrible gurgling noise, and that finally kicked Owen into action. He pressed the muzzle of his gun at the Troglodyte’s temple. 

”Get off her or I'll shoot!” he threatened, not understanding why the police officer was standing nearby, without any attempt to help him. ”Get off her or I'll shoot!”

The Troglodyte continued to choke Tosh. He didn’t care about the gun held to his head. He even chuckled madly. Owen gritted his teeth and kicked the man viciously in the ribs, off Tosh. Tosh gasped for breath, rubbing her throat. Gwen kneeled down to hug her. Owen kicked the man several more times, with all the strength he could muster, to keep him down on the ground. And still, the officer wasn’t moving a finger to help them.

“That was close,” Tosh finally said, voice hoarse, coming from her bruised throat. “How did you find me?”

“We saw the torchlight,” Gwen explained. “What’s happening here, Tosh?”

Tosh shuddered. “They've murdered all the villagers. They're cannibalizing the bodies! Ianto attacked this man, so that I could escape and bring help. I… I don’t know if he’s still alive or not.”

 _So much about Jack’s confidence that they can take care of themselves_ , Owen thought angrily. _Although not bad from Teaboy. I hope he isn’t dead yet._

Surprisingly enough, the man he was holding down with his foot didn’t seem the least concerned. On the contrary; he grinned up at him madly, demanding, “Put the gun down.”

Owen shot him a nasty look. “You're in no position to negotiate, mate.”

“It’s all right, it's all right,” Gwen said, trying to calm Tosh down. “You're safe.” She looked up at the constable. “You can arrest him now.” The constable didn’t move, and Gwen’s voice rose half an octave. “I said you can arrest him!”

The Troglodyte under Owen’s foot grinned. “You gonna arrest me, Huw?”

The officer, whose name was apparently Huw, grinned back. “That'd be a laugh, wouldn't it? My own uncle.”

He pulled his gun and pointed it at Owen. Owen took a sharp breath but didn’t move his foot off the uncle. Gwen quickly let Tosh go and pointed her own gun at the officer. 

“Put the gun down,” she all but screeched. “Don't you hurt him!” 

Owen didn’t move from the spot. If he’d learned one thing during his years with Torchwood, I was that you didn’t negotiate with madmen and notorious killers, be they human or extraterrestrial. You _eliminated_ the threat.

From under his foot, the Troglodyte was shouting at the officer. “Shoot the bastard.” The officer moved in closer to Owen, but he didn’t shoot… yet. “Split his skull.”

Gwen’s shouts weren’t any less loud – but a lot more hysterical. “Put the fucking gun down!”

“Shoot!” the Troglodyte yelled at his nephew. The young man was still hesitating.

“I will shoot you!” Gwen threatened. “Put it down.”

The Troglodyte, clearly not believing that she’d be willing to do so, chuckled madly.

“Pull the trigger,” he encouraged her, leaning up on his elbows and bulging his eyes in a disturbingly Gwen-like manner. “ _Kill_.” 

Gwen and Owen looked at each other. Her lower lip wibbled, and Owen realized that it was no good. She’d never be able to kill a man in cold blood, no matte the risk. Well, _he’d_ been cut from different wood.

“As you wish,” he said calmly, and whirling around, he shot the officer in the head, hitting him square between the eyes. Huw went down like the dead weight he’d suddenly become and hit the ground with a _thud_.

Unfortunately, Owen couldn’t keep his eyes at the uncle at the same time. While he was killing off his nephew, the older man had jumped to his feet and grabbed the still petrified Gwen, using her as a living shield.

“Now, _mate_ ,” he said calmly, “why don't you give me the gun?”

Owen hesitated for a moment. Then he realized that Tosh was being in a really good position to get away. He gave her the signal to do so and handed his gun to the Troglodyte.

“Good boy,” the man said in a condescending manner. “Now you start walking in front of me, right to the Big House. You make one wrong step and she’s dead.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
When the Troglodyte pushed them into the common room of the Big House, there were already half a dozen people present. A few more came in from the other rooms.

“Evan, that Asian girl got away,” one of the men reported. “We tried to find her, but she’s way too good at this.”

The Troglodyte, who must have been the village head, shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She can’t get far. We’ll get her in the morning; it’s gonna be a real good hunt. Where’s the kid, Helen?”

“In the kitchen,” a middle-aged woman replied.

”Who are these people?” Gwen whimpered. Her replaced bandages started to get soaked again.

The older woman shrugged. “This is our village,” she replied. She was plain and looked so frighteningly simple and… and _normal_ , although she was clearly _not_.

“But... but the villagers are all dead,” Gwen said. She couldn’t interpret the amused looks the people in the room exchanged, but Owen suddenly understood it all.

“They're all involved,” he said. “They've all been doing it.”

The village chief nodded, with a smile of horrifying satisfaction on his face. “This is our Harvest. Every generation. Our tradition. Once a decade. Target those travelling through, those most likely to disappear.”

“And butcher them,” Owen finished for him. He felt like throwing up. “You sick fuckers. Only in the bloody countryside!”

“Okay, that’s enough of the pleasantries,” the Troglodyte interrupted. “Get ‘em to the kitchen. We have work to do.”

Two of the men grabbed the prisoners and pushed them into the kitchen area. Evan and the woman he’d called Helen followed.

In the kitchen, the man pushed Owen to his knees. Gwen tore herself free and ran over to the kid who was lying on the dirty floor.

“Are you okay?” she asked; then, as a second thought occurred to her, she looked around searchingly. “Where's Ianto? What have you done with him?”

Instead of answering her, Evan grabbed someone on the floor behind the butcher’s table; the person had a burlap bag over his head, but the clothes were a clear indication. He pulled off the bag, revealing the horrified – and badly bruised – face of Ianto. Owen gritted his teeth. It seemed that they had beaten up Teaboy really badly.

“Wake up, man,” the Troglodyte said cheerfully. “Time to be bled,” he grabbed the meat cleaver off the table and pressed it to Ianto’s throat. A small trickle of blood appeared where the razor sharp tool nicked the skin. “Like veal, it takes a long time. But it definitely makes the meat taste better.”

As Owen watched with horror, wrecking his mind to find a way to save Ianto from being butchered and saw none, he suddenly noticed the glass bowl on the table vibrating. Then came a sound; first faint and far-away, but soon close enough for everyone to hear it. The sounds of motors and rumbling noises got louder and louder.

The Troglodyte let Ianto go and went to the window to check on. “What the fuck... ?” Everyone seemed kind of paralyzed, standing and watching the double doors in morbid fascination.

Then, with a loud crash, the large grey tractor previously standing on the gravelled drive burst through the doors. The Troglodyte ducked out of its way, but he wasn’t fast enough, not by far. The tractor stopped in the middle of the kitchen, and Owen nearly fainted with relief, saying Jack appear with a rifle and shoot the chief cannibal in his leg. 

Their fearless leader then continued shooting at anyone standing up, in a gloriously theatrical Wild West manner. Owen and the others ducked to avoid getting hit, and for a moment, Owen seriously considered kissing Jack once he was done with the shooting business – but only for a moment. He did have his limits, and kissing another guy, even if said guy saved him from being eaten by in-bred, cannibalistic madmen, lay beyond those limits.

In the meantime, Jack kept shooting and hit one villager after another. The woman ran to her rifle leaning against the stove, perhaps thinking that he’d hesitate to aim at someone who could be his mother. She couldn’t have any idea about _who_ exactly he was, though… and what _that_ meant. As soon as she grabbed the rifle, Jack shot her without blinking. Then he continued firing at the others.

When the rifle ran out, he grabbed his handgun and shot the remaining villagers, not particularly caring where he would hit them. As long as they went down, it was all right with him. Owen couldn’t help but secretly admire his determination to save his team, although he’d never tell him, of course. Jack’s self-confidence didn’t need any more nurturing, even though he had every right to _be_ confident.

Having hit everyone, Jack stood in the middle of the room and looked around, to see if there would be any more resistance. When he saw none, he dragged the chief cannibal to his feet and put his gun under his chin.

Gwen, having clambered to her feet, grabbed his arm. “No, Jack! Don't do it.”

Jack gave her an irritated look. “These people don't deserve warnings,” he pointed out. Besides, she was blocking his view, and that could be lethal in a situation like this.

“Let me question him,” Gwen insisted. “I have to understand. I want to know _why_. Otherwise this… this is too much…”

“You’re injured,” Owen reminded her. “You need to get to the hospital, or you’ll bleed to death in no time.”

“And so does Ianto,” Jack stated. “I’m sorry, Gwen, but this is not the time for psychoanalysis. You can’t always _understand_ evil. Sometimes you just have to _eliminate_ it. It’s that simple.” That was the very first lesson hammered into the heads of every new Torchwood recruit. Their job just was like that.

But Gwen wouldn’t have been Gwen if she had let it go, just this one time. “Jack, please give me an hour with him,” she lowered her voice and looked up at him with wide, begging eyes. “Don't tell me you don't want to know, too.”

“Actually...” Jack said dryly, “no, I don’t.” And with that, he calmly shot the Troglodyte’s head to pieces; not caring about the disgusting mess in which that move resulted.

Gwen cried out, angry and disappointed that he’d deny her wish, but in the next moment, two other shots were fired. One from a gun that one of the injured villagers managed to get out from under a cupboard. It hit Gwen in the back, killing her instantly.

The other shot was fired from Toshiko’s gun and killed the villager on the spot. Owen breathed easier to see her; she’d always been a crack shot and rarely hesitated.

“The police – the _real_ police – have arrived,” she said, keeping an eye on the rest of the villagers. “I’ve called the paramedics, too. They’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

“I’m in no hurry to help a bunch of cannibals,” Jack said harshly.

“Neither am I,” Tosh replied. “I called them for _Ianto_. He’s been beaten savagely when he helped me to escape. And there might be other victims still alive.”

The door opened again and the tall, blond figure of PC Andy Davidson appeared in its frame.

“Miss Sato, you’ve got everything under control?” he asked, professionally keeping whatever they might have with each other out of work’s way.

Tosh nodded, while Owen released Ianto and wrapped him into the blanket he’d fetched from the SUV. Then Andy saw the dead body of Gwen and took a sharp breath.

“What happened to her?” he asked.

“Even the luck of fools runs out eventually,” Jack said grimly. “She escaped death twice during this mission alone. I guess the third time was unlucky.”

“Yeah, that sounds like her,” PC Davidson agreed. “Well, sir, if you can take care of your team, I’ll have these people arrested and locked up; and I’ll send the bodies to the morgue. We’re gonna have a long investigation, I reckon.”

Jack nodded and looked after the competent young officer as he went and organized everything within minutes. Then he glanced at Tosh, while Owen was supporting Ianto to the SUV:

“It seems we’ve got a vacancy again,” he said. “What do you think, Tosh – would he be interested?”

Toshiko shrugged. “I can ask him,” she replied, but even in the semi-darkness, Jack could see her blush, just a little.

~The End – for now~


End file.
